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THE INTEGRITY 

OF CHRISTIAN 

SCIENCE 



"t^ 



\.f 



By Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

1900 



TWO COPIES rit:.ob:iV£0, 

Library of Congrats 
Gffle® of til® 

MAY 1 2 1900 

SGgistor of CopyrlgbH 

SECOND COPY, ' WS^ 



COPYRIGHT, 1900, BY ADELINE D. T. WHITNEY 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



58725 



CONTENTS 
I 

PAGE 

^^ T^he Round World and They that 
Dwell T^herein " . . . . i 

II 

^^ Our Reasonable Service^^ . .26 

III 

The Strength that Strengtheneth . 54 

IV 
Rest 70 

V 
^ The Scripture Key 84 



In the following consideration of a sub- 
ject in which much that is sure is involved 
with much that is certainly open to seri- 
ous question^ it is very likely that some of 
the reasonings may he met^ by those of the 
special faith discussed^ with^ ^^ Why^ that 
is Christian Science I " 

// is precisely in the hope that a reality 
of Christian Science may appear which 
shall be sufficient of itself to repudiate any 
dangerous admixture of error ^ that the 
study has been attempted. 

If there is repetition in the argument ^ 
it is the inevitable recurrence of the key- 
note^ which rules and insists in every 
harmony. 



[ 1 ] 

THE INTEGRITY 

OF 

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 



I 

"The Round World and They 
that Dwell Therein '" 



j^HE two halves of the map 
of the world were very- 
puzzling to me when I 
was a child. I could not 
by any mental stereoscopy resolve 
them into a globe. 

It seems to me that is the way many 
persons look at life, and the truth of 




[ 2 ] 

living. They flatten it out on to a 
plane, and make two level, separate 
rounds of it, instead of the beautiful 
unity of a sphere. 

Eastern and Western they call the 
two halves of the earth. Spiritual and 
Material they call the two halves of 
our existence. Out of this separate- 
ness grows all mistake of distance, 
non-relation, opposition. 

It used to seem to me that by this 
split map there was only one jumping- 
over place from round to round; at 
the equator, twenty degrees of longi- 
tude west from Greenwich. Every- 
where else it was a jumping-ofF. It is 
apt to seem to us that there is only 
one jumping-over place from life to 



[ 3 ] 

life. " As far as the East is from the 
West," is our apprehension of the 
states of our being. They are the 
Natural and the Spiritual. We live a 
while in the one ; then, by a narrow 
point of contact we pass over into the 
other. There is no intercourse; no 
going back and forth. Practically, we 
ignore even coexistence ; identity we 
do not dream of And yet there is 
no particle of the earth, no instant nor 
fact of our consciousness, that has not 
both east and west, both higher and 
lower, both inner and outer, involved 
with it, and inextricably joined in it 
to one. The margins meet all round. 
We live upon a globe ; we dwell also 
in a round world, of sense and soul. 



[ 4 ] 

I think that the great need — and 
the great failure — in all knowledge, 
at this day, is to put the two halves 
of it together, and see it in the grand 
relief of its wholeness. Partial know- 
ledges range themselves in antago- 
nisms, where there has no business to 
be antagonism at all. Science is shy 
of religion, and religion rebels at sci- 
ence. Christian Science^ in its breadth 
and depth and height, is the simple 
unison of God's word in the outside 
creation and in humanity. The nat- 
ural and the spiritual are declared one 
in Christ. He is the Revelation, the 
Reconciliation. His is the Gospel 
whose annunciation has broken down 
the wall of partition between sense 



[ 5 ] 

and that which informs and uses sense, 
and given us the password into all 
freedom and fullness. 

Something has taken the name of 
" Christian Science " at this day which 
fails of this breadth and depth and 
height, and falls into the old error of 
separation. So far as it is true, it has 
hold of a mighty truth, built into the 
foundations of the world, and declared 
with power nineteen centuries ago. In 
the strength of this, however warped 
and misapplied, it is gathering crowds, 
building splendid temples, and appar- 
ently sweeping on to a wonderful tri- 
umph. It has hold of humanity by 
humanity's most immediate need. It 
draws toward the old dear faith by a 



[ 6 ] 

new claim and pretension. By an 
apparent tangible sign — while cu- 
riously denying the tangible — it ap- 
peals to the earnest want of those who 
wait a sign. It offers bodily healing ; 
and they who suffer, or dread to suf- 
fer, in the body, rush to it with an 
eager hope, not recognizing that its 
only sure truth is the revelation that 
has been always in the world; that 
has been told and taught them, over 
and over, while yet they have received 
it not. 

The error of the new "Christian 
Science" is fundamental. It lies at 
the starting-point. It bases itself on 
the old fallacy of two half spheres, set 
the one over against the other; the 



[ 7 ] 

one bidden to ignore the other; in- 
deed, the other totally and inconsist- 
ently denied. Here come in false 
doctrine, charlatanism, and the be- 
guilement of the simple. 

" God is all." That is true. 

" Matter is nothing." That cannot 
be true. If it is, then God's creation 
is a stupendous trick. 

There is no such thing as no-thing. 
If there be a possible vacancy, — a 
gap between things which God has 
not occupied, — He has not shown it 
to us, and He never could. We have 
not got there, and we never can. 

The material universe is God's 
showing of Himself; " the garment 
we see Him by." It is His Spirit in 



[ 8 ] 

action, in evidence. We who are of 
His Spirit are so made and quickened 
of Himself, that we may know His 
Name, which He writes before us in 
things. The message, the touch of 
the Divine, is in that to which the 
Divine has so bounded itself by form 
and limitation, that the Infinite may 
be leamed within the lines of the cir- 
cumscribed. 

As God is real, his work is real. It 
is his Saying, and his Saying is the 
truth. He is verity to the last sylla- 
ble of his creation. He keeps his 
word. We know it, and dare to live 
in that knowledge. He " changes 
not; therefore the sons of Jacob are 
not consumed," 



[ 9 ] 

He does not show us false signs; 
neither does He leave us to create il- 
lusions for ourselves. He does not 
curse us with the strange power of 
embodying insanities in a world of 
miserable mirage that shall be as real- 
ity to us, and displace reality, and in 
which we shall be condemned to live. 
He is Himself Maker and Ordainer : 
He has not given his prerogative 
away. " The Lord reigneth : let the 
earth rejoice." 

" Mind is one, — including nou- 
mena and phenomena, God and His 
thoughts." We find this axiom on 
the eighth page of the text-book 
" Science and Health." And' further 
on, this definition of " Idea " : " An 



[ lo 3 

image in Mind; the immediate ob- 
ject of understanding, — Divine re- 
flection." 

" God and His thoughts." The im- 
age in itself which the Divine Mind 
sees, — the noumenon; the manifesta- 
tion and conveyance of that thought 
in the appearance, — the phenom- 
enon. What of all in creative Idea 
and created substance does this ex- 
clude ? What, rather, does it not as- 
sert, of living Fact ? 

God is not a Dreamer. His thought 
is purpose. His purpose is act. Every- 
thing has his thought in it; is quick 
with Presence. Moses saw the bush 
alight and alive with Deity. God 
takes form and dwells among us. 



[ 11 3 

showing us the " invisible things " 
of Himself " by the things that are 
made ; " and by that in us which is 
of Him, we understand. How then 
shall we call his sign, and our percep- 
tion of it, an illusion of the " mortal 
mind " ? There is no " mortal mind." 
Doubtless there may be a low estate 
of mind, which stops at the sense and 
interprets nothing of the spirit. We 
may see and feel as by sense only, or 
by sense as in one relation and by 
spirit as in another irreconcilable with 
it. This is perversion, confusion, dis- 
tress. It is as when our eyes fail to 
focus alike, and to throw their images 
together. "Mortal mind" is mind 
self- limited to earthly things and 



[ 12 ] 

earthly thoughts and earthly desires; 
it gives itself to the love and service 
of" mammon," — the " thing buried in 
the earth ; " and so can neither see nor 
serve the God who lives and sets his 
commandment in all. " Mortal mind " 
is not our human understanding, but 
our human will. It is our " having a 
mind to " live in the mortal. It is this 
kind of mind that is to be done away. 
" In the third degree, mortal mind 
disappears." True again if we read 
for " mind " not our intelligent per- 
ceptions, but our base applications. 
In the highest life, the highest con- 
sciousness, all intelligent perception 
resolves itself into that which unifies ; 
which brings together the seen and the 



[ 13 ] 

unseen, and acknowledges " God and 
His Idea " — God's idea and its ex- 
pression — as selfsame and inclusive. 
The spiritual and natural eyes are 
focused alike ; they see one thing, 
and that indivisible and perfect. 

If " Christian Science " had laid and 
left its emphasis here, — if it stood 
simply and logically upon its own 
declaration, " Mind is one, — including 
noumena and phenomena, God and 
His thoughts," — it would provoke 
no controversy, as it would set forth 
no new discovery. It would need no 
special temples, no supplementary 
apostleship ; it would clasp hands 
with all that is most deeply scientific, 
most devoutly Christian. But it re- 



[ 14 ] 

lapses, apparently, into its own repre- 
hended condition below the "third 
degree," and contradicts itself when it 
goes on to insist that because " God is 
All," therefore matter is nothing be- 
yond an image in " mortal mind." It 
makes nonsense of God's " Let there 
be : " it annihilates His splendid order 
of the universe : it nullifies the di- 
vine hope in our prayer, " Let thy will 
be done on earth as it is in heaven." 
It denies that there shall be " the new 
heavens and the new earth wherein 
shall dwell righteousness," — a divine 
harmony replacing what now is dis- 
joint and antagonism ; God's Idea in 
his creation and his humanity carried 
out and maintained in perfect accord 



[ 15 ] 

and happy fitness, through humanity's 
recognition, acceptance, acquiescence, 
in wholeness^ — that is, holiness : when 
" there shall be upon the bells of the 
horses, HOLINESS UNTO THE 
LORD; and the pots in the Lord's 
house shall be like the bowls before 
the altar." It refuses the " redemption 
of the body," for which "the whole 
creation travaileth, waiting for the 
manifestation." It renounces the glo- 
rification that Christ foreshowed in 
His Transfiguration, and St. Paul 
interpreted, telling us that there shall 
forevermore be a lody ; a form and 
illustration of the real in the appearing, 
the essential in the actual; that there 
shall be things heavenly as there have 



[ i6 3 

been things earthly. It blots away 
the wonder and the majesty of the 
Apocalypse; that sublime sign-pano- 
rama of the " things which it hath not 
entered into the heart of man to con- 
ceive," but which are kept for the 
eternal vision. 

We cannot give all this up, though 
we should try. The human soul can- 
not conceive of itself stripped of visi- 
ble surroundings. The spirits round 
about the throne — the living crea- 
tures — were " full of eyes, before and 
behind." They saw that which had 
been, which was already, and which 
was to be. • They saw without and 
within. They were/^// of eyes. They 
perceived the all of all. 



[ 17 3 

And " before the throne was a sea 
of glass;" an infinite mirroring of 
truth in images. And the sea of glass 
was " mingled with fire ; " the fire of 
the living Spirit in things manifested, 
— the Fire that came down at Pente- 
cost. " And they that have gotten the 
victory over the beasts and his image, 
and his mark, and the number of his 
name, stand on the sea of glass, hav- 
ing the harps of God," — the voices 
of his ineflfable meanings. 

The beast, and the mark and the 
image of him, — the number of his 
name, which is the sense-limit, — are 
the sense-perversions and the living in 
the letter of the mere outward fact. 
Men are tried and proven in actual- 



[ i8 ] 

ities, not in shadows ; the saving prin- 
ciple — the escape from sin and evil 
— is not in denying the facts, but in 
pure use and faithful enduring. We 
go wrong by either over-value or 
refusal. 

Matter is not life ; but it is an issue 
and vehicle of lifco Separate from 
life — hence from reality — it could 
not be. Neither can life itself be, 
without ex-istence, — a going forth 
into demonstration. Life is the es- 
sence of all substance ; substance is 
the necessity of all life. 

What we call material life is life in 
its material relation. Earth teems with 
it in the potential ; essential life urges 
incessantly to the taking of its own in 



[ 19 ] 

this potential, and so clothing itself 
with form and act. A seed sown in 
the earth is alive to that which the 
earth, in continual relation of respon- 
sive vitality, holds ready for it. The 
higher commands, appropriates, as- 
sumes from the lower. It roots down- 
ward, it branches upward ; it reveals 
itself a plant, a tree. And within all 
this secondary nature and evolution is 
the impulse of the Life Supreme which 
means a plant, a tree ; which forms its 
own divine thought into an expres- 
sion ; which makes a speech and lan- 
guage in the natural whereinto that 
which is above the natural may be 
translated. 

The tree, — the flower, — lives at 



[ 20 ] 

once as matter and spirit ; it is a thing 
of earth, showing forth a thing of hea- 
ven. Just so, God wills, and gives 
out of Himself a human soul ; His 
own thinking, loving child. He 
breathes into this soul the breath of 
an eternal life ; but " He giveth it a 
body as it hath pleased Him;" formed, 
as it is phrased in the Genesis, " out 
of the dust of the earth ; " out of, and 
so far identical with, this same sub- 
stance-matter which in itself could be 
nothing, but by Divine communica- 
tion is the revealing of all. 

For his abiding, for his work, in a 
world so created of form and essence, 
— created himself in the same beauti- 
ful relation of being and showing, — 



[ 21 ] 

man depends upon, is inseparable 
from, his material condition. He does 
not have to live in spite of the mate- 
rial, at war with it, but by its use and 
service. Sun and air, plant for food, 
and healing herb, minister to him out- 
wardly of energy, sustenance, restor- 
ing. God comes to him this way for his 
body ; inwardly, directly. He feeds his 
spirit from Himself And yet the two 
ways, the two lives, are not two, but 
one. In all is the "selfsame Spirit, 
ministering as He will." By both, — 
by the Unity of the Life, — man is a 
whole; a spirit in manifestation, — 
"made ready, both in body and in 
soul, to cheerfully accomplish that 
which God commandeth." 



[ 22 ] 

It is the Marriage of the King's 
Son. 

Be reverent of things ; in them is 
the condescension of the Infinite. 
" Lift up your heads, O ye gates ; 
and be ye Hfted up, ye everlasting 
doors." Hold yourselves high, throw 
yourselves wide, ye entrance-ways of 
the Spirit ; and let the spirit of man 
wait, meek and glad, in your porches, 
while the King of Glory shall come 
in. 

Doubtless the Power of God can 
do without intermediates. Doubtless, 
so far as we can follow cause and 
effect, He has sometimes so acted, that 
we may know and believe that the 
Power is in Him, and not in the in- 



[ 23 ] 

termediates without Him. We who 
believe in the whole beautiful unity 
of the story of Jesus Christ, believe 
that the Son of God, — " knowing 
all things that the Father doeth," — 
worked thus in what we call miracle ; 
the direct, accelerated operation of 
the great causing Force, — the Word, 
— which, uttered slowly that we may 
spell its syllables, makes the world 
alive, and all life a miracle. We be- 
lieve He did these things that we 
might feel the signal truth of this 
life, and enter into it through con- 
sciousness of God in all things, from 
instant to instant, from pulse to pulse 
of our being. For this life He or- 
dained, and by this new outgiving 



[ M ] 

He poured forth, the spiritual baptism 
into the "Name" — the everlasting 
declaring and recognition — "of the 
Father, and the Son, and the Holy- 
Ghost." In sign of this He gave the 
bread and wine, that we might learn 
to receive, even in all our mortal sus- 
tenance, the inward nourishing that it 
all means. 

God divides Himself in the mate- 
rial. He is " broken for us," into mor- 
sels that we can receive Him by. He 
pours Himself into the little limit that 
is our cup of life, that we may drink 
from it of the fullness of His own 
measureless life. Shall we refuse the 
bread, saying it is naught ? Shall we 
thrust aside the cup, and let the wine 



[ 25 ] 

be spilled, because we will not take it 
in the dear, small definiteness He has 
prepared for us ? For such rejection 
there is only that other word, — " Not 
one of those which were bidden shall 
taste of my supper." 



[ 26 ] 



II 



^' Our Reasonable Service '* 




AVING reasoned and re- 
cognized that spirit and 
matter together, by God's 
ordinance, make one con- 
stituted world; that they are not an- 
tagonistic, but correlative ; that matter 
is alive with spirit, and spirit finds its 
needful use and expression in matter, 
— let us see what is our reasonable 
practical acceptance of these condi- 
tions ; what is whole truth, and what 
one-sided error, in our understanding 
and appliance of them. 



[ 27 ] 

Is it reasonable, is it whole^ as a 
faith and profession, to assert and de- 
mand a life in the spirit which shall 
scorn and deny that in which spirit, 
from the beginning, clothes itself, and 
with which it exists in a virtual iden- 
tity ? And has such life been proved 
possible, or achieved, by those who 
propound it as a religion ? The old 
ascetics came nearer to it. They 
denied the body utterly. They did 
without the material until they severed 
themselves from the last link with it, 
and went away, let us hope to a larger 
fulfillment of themselves in some new 
creation. But this later asceticism, it 
seems to us outsiders, clings to the 
body, mends it up, and offers such 



[ 28 ] 

restoration and prolonging of bodily 
condition as central motive and great 
ultimate promise. We are to be in- 
dependent of matter by controlling a 
certain perpetuity of matter. Are 
there not strange inconsistencies in the 
new system, between its visible pro- 
ceedings and the fundamental teach- 
ing that no thing is ? 

Do its followers refuse, ignore, the 
pleasantness of the senses, as well as 
the pains thereof? Are sweet tastes, 
delicate odors, beautiful color and 
form, lovely adaptations of the mate- 
rial in furnishing and clothing, no 
longer of any slightest account with 
them? Do they no longer take joy 
in blue skies, clouds, sunsets, mountain 



[ 29 ] 

glories, the flowers of the field, the 
green richness of forests? Do they 
care nothing for bird-songs or brook- 
music? Are all that these many- 
natural revealings inspire, — the con- 
summate symphonies through which 
soul voices itself; the pictures, the 
statues, that reproduce the visible har- 
monies of things ; the very training 
toward perfection of human bodily 
form, — a blank indifference, a dis- 
carded interest, to them? We do 
not see it. We see them clothed, 
adorned, living easily in more or less 
of the luxury to which civilization has 
attained. Nobody is robed in coarse 
frieze of hair ; nobody's meat is only 
locusts and wild honey. Things are 



[ 30 ] 

accepted as they are, for the greatest 
good and comfort that can be got of 
them. And yet — no thing is any- 
thing. 

Why do "Christian Scientists" — 
carrying principles to last results — 
eat, or sleep, or allow themselves 
bodily re-creations, as we call renewals 
of force by changes of air and scene, 
work and exercise ? Why is not the 
inner force unfailing and adequate to 
everything, regardless of instrument 
or adjustment ? Why build houses 
for bodily shelter, since neither the 
bodies are real, to want houses, nor 
the houses anything but images in the 
mortal mind? Why go on living 
in a phantasm ? Is not the way to 



[ 31 ] 

accomplish emancipation to emanci- 
pate? 

To such queries as these a scientist 
has rephed, " We have not yet pro- 
gressed so far as entirely to put off 
these things. We still wear over- 
coats ; we still eat, and live in houses 
warmed by fires. We shall get be- 
yond these needs by and by." 

One here asks the further natural 
question, If you have not got beyond 
the overcoat, and the bread and butter, 
and the roof and fire, — if you still ac- 
knowledge cold and hunger, and use 
material defense and supply, how can 
you claim the advanced control over 
extremest physical exigency of sick- 
ness and hurt, and an absolute inde- 



[ 32 ] 

pendence of physical help and heal- 
ing? or, still further, the power to 
extend this control over other bodily 
organisms than your own? If you 
have not yet been able to " run with 
the footmen," how do you undertake to 
" contend with horses " ? Are you not 
making large drafts upon the future ? 

Still again, apart from such bodily 
necessities, and in needless bondage 
to the sensible, why decorate and em- 
bellish clothing and shelter? Why 
put life and strength into that which 
has not life, which is merest mockery 
and waste ? 

Why, above all, build costly tem- 
ples, splendidly elaborate in material 
substance, — brick, stone, mortar, and 



[ 33 ] 

the rest, — in which to teach this re- 
nunciation of the thralldom of things ? 
Why make false showings of nothing, 
and pander to the delusions of mortal 
belief? 

Coming straight to the crucial point 
of the whole practical question, — 
why, after all, heal? What is the 
restoring of the body, and of what 
account ? If there is no pain, there 
can be no well-being, no positive joy 
or comfort of health. If disease is 
a figment, health is but a negation. 
There can be neither delight nor ser- 
vice by sense. We are evidently 
made in a mistake, or a deception, 
which it is our business to expose and 
rectify. Are we content with such 



[ 34 ] 

conclusion ? Do we accept such re- 
sponsibility ? One would think it 
might be here that angels would fear 
to tread. 

And why, O prophets and teachers 
of a twentieth-century revelation, take 
money for healing or instruction? Is 
there any lower sign in the material 
than money? It is not even — as 
money — a things as the Lord has 
made things, and given them freely to 
our use. It is the arbitrary wage and 
token of work and claim in things, in 
all this so-charged false and evil com- 
merce of the flesh. Earned by any 
less than absolutely righteous equiva- 
lent, — in the extreme reasoning from 
the theory in question, by anything 



[ 35 ] 

that touches or ministers solely to the 
sensible, — applied to anything less 
than purely righteous use (and what 
becomes of its use if the sensible be 
done away ?), it is the very " mark of 
the beast, and the number of his 
name ; " his certificate and sign-man- 
ual to our credit in account with him. 
So long as spiritual healing is a 
money-making avocation, — so long 
as apostleship in the new teaching 
takes fee and reward, so long it defiles 
and falsifies itself with that which 
Simon Magus offered, and Paul re- 
jected, with " Thy money perish with 
thee ! " and so long, on its own pre- 
mising as to sense and spirit, must we 
distrust, refuse, condemn. 



[ 36 3 

The light from heaven comes with- 
out taxation. There is a wisdom from 
above, which is " easy to be intreated, 
full of mercy and good fruits, without 
partiality, and without hypocrisy." 
There is another different wisdom, 
which is from beneath. We cannot 
help but judge between the two. By 
motive and by method we must try 
the spirits. 

These are inconsistencies in the 
general ; in the whole reasoning and 
application of the theory. There are 
absurdities and contradictions in de- 
tail, which can hardly escape the most 
casual notice. We come upon them 
at nearly every step, if we pause to 
consider all that is involved. 



[ 37 ] 

" Persuasion," — " belief," — " habit 
of thinking," — to these, whatever they 
in turn may be explained to mean, 
are relegated the accounting for of 
what we deem in our folly actual ex- 
perience. To say nothing of how far 
full persuasion and actual experience 
may be practically identical and refer- 
able to the same inevitable law of 
human condition, — how does the ar- 
gument work, in every example ? If 
only habits of belief, kept up by tra- 
dition, cause the seeming of disease 
and pain, how is it with little infants, 
who have not come under any of these 
false influences and persuasions ? If 
a pin prick a baby, the baby cries ; he 
is quite as sure as Mrs. Gradgrind was 



[ 38 ] 

that there is a "pain somewhere in the 
room," though his reason may not be 
developed to name or place it. How 
is this baby affected by any " mental 
belief " about pain ? Perhaps " Chris- 
tian Science " would say it inherits an 
instinct, a dread ; would call it a result 
of " embryotic thought : " how then 
account for the baby's fearlessness of 
all that it has not yet experienced ? 
It will placidly pick up a red-hot 
coal ; it will do this once, but not a 
second time. It is only the actually 
burnt child that dreads the fire. 

So far as the published teaching of 
the new school is susceptible of ra- 
tional interpretation, — there is a great 
deal upon which it is difficult to bring 



[ 39 ] 

the average reason to bear, — it seems 
to be therein set forth that not only- 
after finding ourselves here in the flesh, 
in a material world, does the inherited 
perversion of " beliefs " beset us, per- 
suading us that flesh is subject to cer- 
tain material conditions, the last of 
which is its final rendering up of tem- 
porary office, — not only are we ill, 
and do we die, because our fathers 
made the same mistakes and left us 
with the tradition that we must, — but 
births as well as death, is traditional ! 
We are bom because of an " embry- 
otic belief" ! No wonder this "mor- 
tal mind " of ours is a hard thing to 
define. It scarcely seems to stop 
short of preexistent cause. Truly, the 



[ 40 ] 

force of "persuasion" could no fur- 
ther go than to persuade of this. 

And as to " persuasion " in the gen- 
eral, we are here reminded to ask, if 
by persuasion only we are subject to 
certain ills that seem, what is this 
reliance upon a counter-persuasion to 
which we are so vehemently admon- 
ished? Is it not somewKat sugges- 
tive of Beelzebub casting out Beelze- 
bub? 

Leaving these baffling inconsist- 
encies, however, and seeking the deep 
consistencies of truth, we come, inevi- 
tably, to this : — 

Souls and bodies, we must accept 
ourselves. Spirit and matter informed 
by spirit, we must accept creation. 



[ 41 ] 

God's will and God's means are one, 
acting in one. We are bound to re- 
ceive Him in his own methods. If 
He puts his life-giving into the sun- 
light, it is no less his life. If He 
puts his healing into the herb of the 
field, it is no less of Him in its na- 
ture, purpose, and action than was the 
immediate touch of his holy Christ. 

The scorning of power bestowed 
through things given, and the intelli- 
gence given to discern and use, is not 
entire reliance on the Divine Will and 
Strength. It is refusal of them in the 
way offered. It is taking heaven by 
violence. It is usurping divine pre- 
rogative. It is only half belief It 
will believe in miracle, but not in 



[ 42 ] 

the washing in Jordan. It will ask 
for restored sight, but will repudiate 
the anointing of the blind eyes with 
clay. 

The leper cries out to be made 
clean, and the Christ cleanses his body 
by a bodily touch. What did He do 
that for? Sometimes He healed by 
his word only, received in faith ; some- 
times by a permitted grasp upon the 
hem of his garment. Was it not to 
teach us that all ways are his ; that the 
hem of his garment sweeps out over 
the whole universe of things ; that by 
all means we may lay hold of Him, 
and draw forth from Him the willing 
virtue of his restoring? 

The lightning leaps from heaven to 



[ 43 ] 

earth no less by line and law than if 
we could trace its swiftness; and so 
does miracle follow its quick, in- 
visible course from cause to effect by- 
links ordained from the beginning; 
no less nor more a miracle than when 
the process is shown to us step by 
step, that our slow, partial reasoning 
may follow it. When God chooses 
that we shall use his visible, tangible 
means, — and as to the visible and 
tangible of us He does ordinarily 
seem so to choose, — when He safely 
folds away in leaf or root, or crystal- 
lizes into some mineral substance, a 
principle that so relates to our physi- 
cal organism as to minister to its need 
or soothe its suffering, is it any less 



[ 44 ] 

his ordering than that food should 
nourish us? Is it any less a com- 
munication of his own life to ours ? 

" He was known of them in the 
breaking of bread ; " " The leaves of 
the tree of life are given for the heal- 
ing of the nations," — what do these 
words mean, if not that God's way is 
to give Himself to us mediately, — 
through even the outermost things, — 
the very leaves, — that are put forth 
from life-power, that they may have 
transmission-power of life ? And is 
it any less an act of prayer and faith 
in us so to look for and receive his 
gift, than in effect to cast it aside with 
contempt, saying, "We care not for 
thy sign; we do not believe in it; 



[ 45 ] 

speak to us without a parable; give 
us Thyself without veil or vehicle " ? 
Which is faith, and which is blas- 
phemy ? 

"All things are yours," saith the 
apostle ; " and ye are Christ's, and 
Christ is God's." There is the chain, 
the living line; Christ came in the 
flesh to join and prove the holy cir- 
cuit. " Of him, and through him, 
and to him, are all things." " There- 
fore," St. Paul goes on, reaching the 
intent and end of all, " I beseech you, 
by the mercies of God, that ye present 
your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, 
acceptable unto God, which is your 
reasonable service." Directly upon 
which he adds the counter-admonition, 



[ 46 ] 

against a materialism that would dis- 
join itself from the essential life : " Be 
not conformed to this world, but be 
ye transformed by the renewing of 
your mind, that ye may prove what 
is that good, and acceptable, and per- 
/^^/* will of God." 

Be not shaped to a mere earthly 
ideal. Put not your whole conscious- 
ness and desire into things; live not 
from the wrong end of your being. 
Let the higher flow through, and con- 
trol, and determine, the lower and 
lesser. " Be subject unto the higher 
powers. ^// powers are of God'' 
Let spirit have its rule in all ; spirit, 
continually reinforced, through obe- 
dience, by the Divine. Then you 



[ 47 ] 

shall indeed be whole, and "in your 
whole spirit, and soul, and body," 
shall " glorify God." To worship the 
Father in spirit and in truth is to feel 
Him in the spirit, and confess Him 
in the manifestation. 

Spirit stands first and inmost in the 
order. Beyond doubt, to give spirit 
its due dominion, to maintain its 
power and precedence, is to plant 
force at its centre. To hold the soul 
serene and high and quiet, trustful 
and fearless, is to take attitude and 
supply condition most open and aux- 
iliary to all help and healing. It is 
upon this principle that the new 
practice rests, and through the opera- 
tion of this potency that it gets its 



[ 48 ] 

testimony. But it is no new ground ; 
no first discovered potency. We 
all know, and medical science fully 
acknowledges, that there is a large 
class of disorders that no external 
treatment will reach; that can only 
be overcome by reinforcement of 
moral and mental strength. "You 
can do yourself more good than I 
can do you," says the true doctor 
often to his patient. 

Wonders happen, when there have 
been faith and prayer, even without 
external appliance ; we will not de- 
spise nor dispute the fact. They hap- 
pen also with the kind of faith and 
prayer that joins itself to an intelligent 
use of means. The physician says, 



[ 49 ] 

honestly, at an extreme crisis, " All 
that we know how to do has been 
done. The rest is with God." " Chris- 
tian Science " calls this " giving over 
the case;" it steps in with assured 
word, and claims the charge. God 
does do the rest. But shall we say 
He has not been in the case from the 
beginning? How shall any contra- 
dictory science appropriate the credit 
of results, or say that there had been 
no faith, no looking to a divine power, 
in the doing of that other all? Spirit- 
ual and natural science should con- 
fess each other, and join hands for 
humanity ; in the highest, most 
beneficent ministration they do so 
join. 



[ so ] 

Spiritual and physical order consent 
mutually. This is the way we are 
made and put together. Only God 
can remake and put us together dif- 
ferently. Whether He ever will or 
not, it is not our business to say. Our 
business is to be as He has made us, 
not to tear ourselves in sunder. As 
we are, only unison is completeness. 
It is to this acceptation and end, this 
obedience and harmony, this " reason- 
able service," that we are called and 
commanded. Our whole power, de- 
light and use, are to be our continual 
" living sacrifice." And a living thing 
is not a thing in any part destroyed 
or crushed. We are to rejoice and 
give thanks in all, while we lift all 



[ 51 ] 

up as the offering is lifted up over the 
altar. 

This is Christian Science. If, or so 
far as, that which has taken the dis- 
tinctive name is the study and know- 
ledge of our human life in its entirety, 
in the spiritual and the physical, in 
our conjunction on the one hand to 
our Creator and on the other to the 
system of things He has created for us, 
— it is the one, same, glorious truth 
that we have had through Abraham, 
Moses, and the Prophets ; through the 
Son of God Himself; and it can- 
not be supplemented nor replaced 
by any re-statement or readjustment, 
nor further authenticated, though one 
should rise from the dead. So far as 



[ 52 ] 

it pretends to a new and special dis- 
covery, and a separate teaching, or 
makes a trade of truth and benefit, or 
divorces that which God hath joined 
together in his universe, it is presump- 
tuous and pernicious, an opening for 
fraud and delusion. 

"Believe not every spirit. Every 
spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ 
is come in the fleshy'' — that the Liv- 
ing Word is in the world, — "is of 
God. And every spirit that confess- 
eth not that Jesus Christ is come 
in the flesh, is not of God. This is 
that spirit of antichrist." 

What is this confession but that of 
the Infinite and Eternal Incarnation? 
The acknowledgment of the real- 



[ 53 ] 

ity and sacredness of all things, as ta- 
bernacles and instruments of that 
whose reality and sacredness cannot 
be searched or touched without a me- 
diation ? 



[ 54 ] 

III 

The Strength that Strengtheneth 

[CCEPTING the natural, 
we accept it as it is, — 
as we find ourselves in 
it, — with all its laws, 
limits, and possibilities. We do not 
know why all things are, but we re- 
cognize that they are, and acquiesce. 
If peace is real and possible, its an- 
tithesis, pain, is also real and possible. 
The one is to be obviated, or borne, 
that the other may be hoped for and 
ensue. We believe that each is a part 
of our eternal training. 




[ 55 ] 

It is true that matter, by itself, can 
have neither attribute of peace or 
pain. But matter is not by itself It 
cannot be, it never is, apart from 
spirit. We cannot so conceive of it. 

The relation of our conscious life 
to a particular body of matter may 
be dissolved; the life may be lifted 
away and set elsewhere. But it is 
only our life — rather, our conscious- 
ness of life in such temporary con- 
junction — that is lifted away. This 
power of removal is in the hands of 
God. Our times are his. That to 
which we have been joined is then 
only dead to us, and as our represen- 
tation in this body and form of life. 
It is not dead to God. It is his, still, 



[ 56 ] 

in its elements ; instinct with his will 
and power, and used by Him, over 
and over, in the economy of his live 
world. 

If we could detach any bit of our 
material body from its informing, 
conscious spirit, then it would be dead 
to us, and fall away. To put it more 
truly, if we could withdraw utterly 
our conscious spirit, and all its even 
involuntary action, from any point of 
our bodily form, we should leave that 
part of us as dead. By a merciful 
appointment the life does so withdraw 
itself from a crushed and useless part 
that can only be a suffering and a 
threatening to the whole, and the part 
is " mortified." What becomes, then, 



[ 57 ] 

of the doctrine that we can heal our- 
selves, or be healed, by such ignoring 
and refusal of the flesh as amounts, if 
it amounts to anything, to such with- 
drawal? We take away the very 
power of healing, — the life-instinct 
of recuperation. We can only conquer^ 
or he helped to conquer^ by enduring. By 
being willing to live on, through the 
pain, and keep active that working 
of spirit in bodily relation which we 
call bodily vitality, and which strives 
toward health and restoration. The 
wise physician knows that though 
pain may be alleviated, it may not be 
deadened wholly and persistently, lest 
the life which is the consciousness of 
it should desist from its repairing 



[ 58 ] 

effort. Some pain must be bome. 
Borne in the strength of the spirit, it 
is good for us. It is like the pain of 
repentance in the soul. It proves the 
life, and the possible redemption. 

The strength of the spirit is the 
Divine com-fort. It is the Great 
Strength " with " us. " As one whom 
his mother comforteth, so will I com- 
fort you." 

Com-passion. Com-fort. Bearing 
the pain, — sharing the strength, — 
with us. That is what the mother 
does, in a small, human way; it is 
what the Lord does, with all his hea- 
venly might and love. It is the 
Christ-Strength, in which we " can do 
all things." It was the strength of 



[ 59 ] 

the Crucified, in which he did not 
come down from the cross, nor com- 
mand to his bodily succor the twelve 
legions of angels. It was his triumph, 
to the last utterance, — '' It is fin- 
ished." 

The Supreme Sacrifice — the di- 
vine submission in the Divine 
Strength, to the last possible extrem- 
ity of the human — was the victory 
for us and with us over the evil. In 
this Sign we conquer. 

Is the sign real, or a shadow? 
Here arises the unanswerable ques- 
tion. If pain and death are fabulous, 
what did the Son of Man suffer? 
What did He accept and share, as 
part of his humanity ? A delusion ? 



[ 6o ] 

Or did He delude the world by a 
pantomime of pain and death ? One 
or the other conclusion, upon the 
theory that negatives the material, is 
inevitable. And in either case, what 
becomes of our belief in this Son of 
Man? What becomes of Christian 
science ? 

Christian Science is indeed larger 
than any apparition of trouble. It 
knows that the apparition of trouble 
is not from the belief that pain exists, 
but from the idea that pain is evil. 
Evil is the only apparition; the 
thought that suffering and limitation 
in the human are essentially bad is 
the only delusion. Security and de- 
liverance are from something in the 



[ 6i ] 

heart that gives certainty of good be- 
hind the passing phase of contradic- 
tion and distress. "Let not your 
heart be troubled," says the Saviour 
to his own, in the face of earthly dan- 
ger and mortal dread. 

In anguish itself is promise of the 
end. " It will be over soon," comes 
the mother-whisper. And against the 
fear, which is more terrible than pain, 
we are assured beforehand, " Ye shall 
not be tried beyond that ye are able 
to bear. I will make an escape for 
you." 

We need not be afraid for that 
which is to come. We do not know 
what God has for us, against our su- 
preme need ; but we may be sure 



[ 62 ] 

that it will be there, waiting. We 
do not know what the opened heaven 
will stretch out to us in our agony, 
any more than we know what the 
agony itself shall be until it arrives. 
We only remember and hold fast to 
the great word, — " When the enemy 
shall come in like a flood, the Spirit 
of the Lord shall lift up a standard 
against him." 

In this faith there is better than in- 
stantaneous healing or unconditional 
release. We find ourselves elected 
" partakers of. the suffering of Christ," 
that we may be " also of the consola- 
tion." Always, in all these beautiful 
words, the conjoining syllable. We 
are made commoners with the Lord. 



[ 63 ] 

We are together with Him in the 
anguish, that we may be also in the 
glory. How far grander and sweeter 
this is, than the revival of the ancient 
stoicism which had no gospel ; which 
said, and repeats now defiantly, " I 
will not suffer. I refuse hurt. I am 
not of the earthly at all. I have no- 
thing to bear." This is resistance, 
denial, struggle ; the attitude at bay. 
The other is power and peace. It is 
God's Strength. We are willing to 
" have this treasure in earthen vessels, 
that the excellency of the power may 
be in God, and not in us." We are 
glad to " bear the image of the earthly, 
that we may also bear the image of 
the heavenly." 



[ 64 ] 

End, motive, victory, — all suprem- 
acy of the spiritual, — are in those 
words. To " bear the image of the 
heavenly." To have the heavenly 
image, — the spiritual body, — the 
inner personality, — so formed to 
power and beauty as to be ready for 
its resurrection ; its coming forth into 
the grand fulfillment of the life that is 
to be. So to take all outward disci- 
pline and experience as to receive 
more and more of the divine inward 
reinforcement. So to be healed — 
made whole — from the heart out- 
ward, as even bodily healing of wound 
and hurt teaches us must be the way. 
To learn and get the real regeneration 
that we need. 



[ 65 ] 

There is no bodily iM that has not 
its correspondent in the spiritual or- 
ganism. These may not always, in 
the individual, literally coincide. We 
have not yet, perhaps, traced pain and 
disease to their remotest sources, and 
we may not always judge others or 
ourselves by direct inference. But we 
know this ; that the central need is 
more than the external, and that until 
it shall be reached and supplied, outer 
condition cannot be redeemed from its 
participated penalty, nor the world of 
things be reconciled to the best life 
that ought and might be in it. We 
are to seek both kinds of renewal. 
There is a literal balm in Gilead, and 
it was not made for naught. We may 



[ 66 ] 

gather and use it. There is balm of 
. spiritual grace also, to be had by the 
looking for. We must believe and 
receive both. They are to work to- 
gether. " Every creature of God is 
good, and nothing to be refused, if it 
be received with thanksgiving ; " but 
there is a gift, a help, a strength, a 
nourishing, that " is profitable unto all 
things, having promise of the life that 
now is, and of that which is to come." 
"For to this end we labor and strive, 
because we have our hope set on the 
living God, who is the Saviour of all 
men." 

This is the true spiritual belief and 
treatment; and it needs no new sci- 
ence, nor proclamation, nor mystical 



[ 67 ] 

ministry at second hand ; but only a 
direct, simple, individual acceptance 
of all the Supreme Goodness, in all its 
chosen ways of impartation, knowing 
that every one is part and complement 
of every other. 

" Wait upon the Lord." But wait 
vigorously : not passively, helplessly, 
expecting all and doing nothing. 
" Whatsoever He saith unto you, do 
it." Whatever means He gives you, 
use them. " Fill the waterpots with 
water, — up to the brim." Do it in 
faith, though it may seem only water ; 
and say not that the water is not wine, 
and never can be. " They that wait 
on the Lord," — in his appointinent, 
not for Him in idle attendancy, — 



[ 68 ] 

" shall increase their strength. They 
shall mount up on wings like eagles ; 
they shall run and not be weary, they 
shall walk and not faint." For what 
are eagles' wings, and what are the 
feet of runners, but vehicle and instru- 
ment that God feeds with instant and 
continuous power ? Why do we not 
leam, in this our wonderful day, that 
although the power is central there 
must still be the secondary motor and 
the trolley line ? 

The Christ-Secret — the revelation 
and the watchword of the knowledge 
that is Life — was given long ago. 
" Lay hold of My Strength." 

Never lose touch with it. It is 
all yours. It is behind your every 



[ 69 ] 

true effort, in every kind ; " above all, 
through all, in you all." It is " made 
perfect in your weakness." It shall 
carry you through. By it you shall 
conquer and attain. By it you are 
already conquering and attaining, 
while you " endure " and " follow on," 
in " whatsoever I command you." 



[ 70 ] 

IV 

Rest 

'ULL consent is absolute 
rest. 

Not hopeless capitula- 
tion; but strong acqui- 
escence and willing co-operation. A 
unity with God's will and way, that 
is the certainty of hope, — that has 
become faith. Consent is brave ; 
surrender is cowardly. Unwilling 
work is wearying ; work with a will 
is inspiring. Consent is a power of 
endurance that gives us the upper 
hand; succumbing thrusts us under. 




[ 71 ] 

The moment we cry out, " It is too 
much for me," the agony takes pos- 
session and has its way. Agreement 
bears us on; resistance hinders, and 
is its own pain. " A woman when 
she is in travail, hath sorrow ; " but 
she consents triumphantly with the 
sorrow, in the joy that a man shall be 
born into the world. A woman's 
suffering is a woman's crown, not 
curse. 

Rest is not inertness; it is open- 
ness, readiness, assured confidence, 
and expectation. We are most at 
rest, often, in the midst of exertion. 
Labor is repose, when it is surely in- 
telligent of its end. 

" They shall rest in their beds, each 



[ 72 ] 

one walking in his uprightness." This 
is Isaiah's lovely paradox of utmost 
truth. It tells of the essential rest; 
the rest in sure, strong, unhindered 
doing, which *' remains for the people 
of God." 

It is meant to begin here. We are 
to learn it in these very relations of 
soul and body, spirit and substance, 
which are inseparable in our nature 
and in all nature, and are to be recon- 
ciled together in a final glorious har- 
mony. The earthly was not made to 
be despised nor destroyed, but to be 
wisely, reverently, obediently, gladly 
accepted and lifted up. Any science, 
any faith, that insists and presumes 
otherwise, is an attempt to dissolve 



[ 73 ] 

God's own bond that has joined seen 
with unseen, sense with its signifying 
to spirit, and holds all life in equili- 
brium. It is a continual, violent 
struggle and torture of disruption, 
never to be effected. It is a futile 
labor that will never attain to rest. 

The Seventh Day Rest of the Lord 
was his rest in the very things that He 
had made. He had built a house for 
his Spirit to dwell in, — to fill inces- 
santly with his own Life and Light. 
To put his children into, that they 
might find it home ; might use, enjoy, 
inherit it. His Rest was that of his 
infinite nature, of which we have a 
reflection in our own little experience, 



, [ 74 ] 

when we have accompUshed any 
work; when we have done, built, 
something in which the spirit of our 
life finds expression and abiding ; the 
sense of rest we have in home and be- 
longing, in plan, system, organization. 
We do not eliminate ourselves from 
these, and stand apart from them, 
when they are completed. They are 
only complete to a beginning. We 
make them alive by continual action, 
appropriation, application to service. 
A family home is instinct with family 
life; with the motive and intent of 
its formers. Its every furnishing has 
a family meaning. Nothing in it is 
disowned, unreal. It is full of use, 
of duty, of relation. 



[ 75 ] 

God has not left his house dead or 
desolate. It is his dwelling place 
with us. He has put nothing into it 
to be denied, refused, despised, or de- 
clared needless. In every sign is His 
Presence. In every touch is his close 
coming, — his benediction. " The 
strength of the hills is His Strength." 
The Everlasting Arms are round us 
bodily, as truly as in the spirit. The 
one cannot be — was not meant to 
be — without the other. We cannot 
lay ourselves down to sleep but by his 
holding up. All rest is in Him. He 
has provided force in substance, 
against which we may lean secure; 
we shall not fall through into nothing- 
ness. If it were not so, — if He did 



[ 76 ] 

not make things sure and solid for us 
with his own faithfulness and might, 
never breaking the continuity of Will 
by which He has fixed "the round 
earth so fast that it cannot be moved/' 
— we should have no bodily rest nor 
hold. He has us always in the hol- 
low of his hand. 

So environed, so met in our help- 
lessness and auxiliated in our en- 
deavor by all-pervading Power, shall 
we say of that which the Almighty 
interposes between our need as crea- 
tures and his central Almightiness, — 
his method and means for caring for 
us, — " It is nothing ; it is our own 
miserable conceit; we can do with- 
out it; we are to put it aside, for it is 



[ 77 ] 

unworthy of our own reality ; we are 
to be God unto ourselves, without 
any mediation " ? 

Physical law — the law of forces 
in the material — constrains, supports 
us on every side. We do not think 
of departure or escape from it. To 
be ignorant of it is to be in peril 
at every step. We submit to its 
restrictions, — its incident hurts and 
penalties, — that we may have its 
benefits. In the commonest affairs 
of life, we acknowledge the practical 
necessity. " Christian Scientists " still 
have fires in their furnaces in the win- 
ter. They admit that they do not 
attempt to keep themselves warm by 
belief I suppose a Christian Scien- 



[ 78 ] 

tist housewife still puts her bread — 
not being yet so far advanced in her 
faith as to have found bread an un- 
necessary imagination — into the oven 
to bake. She would not expect the 
dough to become bread by standing 
on the kitchen table. 

We have the laws of mechanics, 
and men study and apply them. It 
is a science, a profession. Is it an 
un-christian science? We travel — 
believers and unbelievers — over 
bridges and rails, constructed and laid 
in accordance with mechanical re- 
quirement in material force and pro- 
portion. We neither ignore nor neg- 
lect these conditions. If a bridge be 
badly or ignorantly built, and injury 



[ 79 ] 

or loss of human life result, would 
Christian Science prevent a demand 
upon a railroad company for just in- 
demnity ? 

We have also the science of hy- 
giene and therapeutics. Men make 
a life-study of bodily conditions, their 
causes and remedies. They search 
out all methods for promoting and 
sustaining health, all relations of the 
outer world to our natural life, all pre- 
ventions of harm and powers of heal- 
ing. They apply them with scrupu- 
lous observation and comparison of 
effect. They stand prepared with the 
best of human wisdom, counsel, and 
relief for us. And we depend — we 
rely — on these knowledges and cer- 



[ 8o ] 

tainties to which they have attained 
in that which we cannot fully study 
out for ourselves, as we depend on 
the intelligence that has mastered the 
principles of physics to their applica- 
tion in the most complicated and 
magnificent engineering. 

Until we repudiate all custom 
founded on mechanics, chemistry, and 
mathematics, why should we cast 
aside physiology, with its threefold 
resultant use and help, in hygiene, 
medicine, and surgery? 

Every worker — the laborer, the 
engineer, the physician — works upon 
this sure basis of established fact, upon 
which all our life in the sensible is 
predicated; the reverent worker acts 



[ 8i ] 

in the strength and faith of its divine- 
ness. 

" In returning and rest shall ye be 
saved ; in quietness and confidence 
shall be your strength." In a return- 
ing which is a referring of all things 
and happenings to a spiritual origin, 
maintenance, and prevailing; in the 
quietness and confidence resulting 
from our conviction that we do live 
in a divine order ; that nothing is un- 
real, disconnected, or out of place; 
that in every least concern, not com- 
manding our repudiation of anything 
but sin, " our help cometh from Him 
who hath made heaven and earth." 
We return to the deep and simple 
faith in the relation of all our life to 



[ 82 ] 

God. The " nature of things " is His 
Nature and way. We are not afraid 
of it. We are not doubtful of it. 
We know that only our own mis- 
takes about it can do us harm ; and 
that even if we do mistake, there is 
still a rescue or retrieval reserved for 
us in the infinite plan. 

We rest in the certainty that all is 
provided for. This is the beautiful 
belief which forestalls and precludes 
all morbid "persuasions." If we had 
it vitally enough, we should fall into 
the waves or the fire, if summoned to 
do so, with as sure a trust and pro- 
found a peace as possess us when we 
lie down to sleep. 

This is full consent and utter reli- 



[ 83 ] 

ance. It finds the world we know a 
coherent, good, and beautiful whole; 
it makes the body of our life a sacred 
thing and our " reasonable service ; " 
it feels always behind and with the 
human the Everlasting Strength; it 
hushes into calm our extremest fear 
and doubt. It is Christian Science in 
its integrity. 



[ 84 ] 



V 



T^he Scripture Key 




?N its argument and inter- 
pretation, the " Christian 
Science" of the new 
school uses a term by 
which it confesses it cannot adequately 
express the thing it means, and then 
sets up the thing thus imperfectly 
designated as the falsity and delusion 
to be overthrown. All reasoning is 
directed against it ; all significance 
of the Divine Word is forced into 
denial of it ; all hope for the human 
race is centred in the promise of a 



[ 85 ] 

final absolute deliverance from it. 
It is called — admittedly by a sole- 
cism — "mortal mind." The whole 
teaching hinges upon, and reiterates, 
the assaults upon this windmill, this 
" unreality," this active power which 
has " no actual existence." 

It would be well to start, in any 
search for authoritative testimony 
concerning the subject involved, with 
a clearer definition. Apparently, what 
is meant by this metaphysical assump- 
tion of something that is not, is simply 
what we are all conscious of as insep- 
arable fi-om our present human condi- 
tion ; namely, our material perception. 

We recognize ourselves as in a 
body; we recognize the Truth of 



[ 86 ] 

things as in a body of things. The 
question is, can we divest ourselves 
of this conscious relation, and if so, 
what is left for us to know with, and 
what is left about us to know by ? 

There is an effort to prove, by a 
very strained and partial, not to say 
contradictory, interpretation of Scrip- 
ture, that no world of things, as such, 
was ever created, that none exists. 
That we are not " clothed upon,'' but 
unclothed and naked souls, in the 
presence of blank, unclothed Spirit. 

It does not seem as if this were 
really the way that God has come 
down to us, or that the highest insight 
and inspiration have so conceived and 
declared Him. 



[ 87 ] 

The Hebrew Scriptures are the 
records of such insight and inspiration. 
They are written in the primeval lan- 
guage of exact meanings ; when to 
see was to discern expression; when 
things were words; when there was 
" no speech nor language " but from 
the Word that had "gone forth into 
all the world." 

It was this secret that Swedenborg 
announced. It was no " discovery/' 
except in the sense of a new uncover- 
ing. It was no constructive theory; 
it was not promulgated with intent 
to make of it a new religion; it was 
but one more grand unfolding of the 
old. It was what prophets and poets 
have understood and spoken from the 



[ 88 ] 

beginning; what they are seeing with 
clearer and clearer vision, and utter- 
ing with more and more vital force, 
to-day. 

The New Testament of Jesus Christ 
is the Life and Manifestation of the 
Old ; the great, inclusive Incarnation ; 
the evangel of the " Word made flesh, 
and dwelling among us/' 

Where, if not in these two books 
of inspiration and fulfillment, shall we 
find testimony of the true relation of 
Life and life ; of Reality and the real- 
ities; of the Essential and the evi- 
dent? 

No study of such a subject would 
be complete or satisfying without re- 
ference to these. " Christian Science " 



[ 89 ] 

was wise in its generation in claiming 
the Sacred Record as its own basis ; 
in offering its own exegesis as deepest 
recognition of its truth. To many 
minds, who in the latter-day neglect 
of Scripture research, or in carelessness 
of any but the most superficial accept- 
ance of a Book not to be ignored, but 
nevertheless under process of super- 
sedure by a later practical wisdom, — 
or in earthly absorption in the very 
" things " they now so glibly declare 
non-existent, — have been in blind- 
ness to the whole world of truth under 
language and form, this new opening 
up of something in the Bible which 
is to set free from the "body of sin 
and death," and give dominance over 



[ 90 ] 

the material by the very refusal of 
matter, has come with a wonderful 
awakening of interest. In so far as it 
may be the beginning of the real 
"hunger and thirst" which shall 
surely be satisfied, it may have its 
errand and initial work. This we 
would not hinder. " Search the Scrip- 
tures, for in them ye think ye have 
(already) eternal life ; and they are they 
which testify of Me," were the words 
of the Lord of Truth to the pharisaic 
sense-and-ordinance worshipers in law 
and ceremony. Sooner or later, the 
real light will shine forth. It is much 
to have opened the eyes, and to be 
looking toward the east. 

To help, rather than to oppose, 



[ 91 ] 

such earnestness, some comparison of 
the foregone conclusions of an arbi- 
trary doctrine appropriated from the 
declarations of Holy Writ with the 
declarations themselves, — some in- 
quiry as to what prophets and apostles 
really have set forth from their spirit- 
ually enlightened perceptions in their 
annunciations to a waiting world, — 
may well be made. 

Necessarily, such examination and 
comparison must be very brief; it can 
only give clue and index for larger 
and corroborative study. 

The Bible is full of statement and 
illustration concerning the unity of 
things and spirit ; for the reason that 
itself is the very revelation and key 



[ 92 ] 

to that unity, and the unity is the cen- 
tral being and motive of the divine 
cosmos, which by that selfsame iden- 
tity and intent is a universe. 

It is nothing new to set this forth. 
There is no claim of " discovery " in 
so doing. It is simply a pointing 
out, here and there, something of the 
throngingly recurrent testimony in the 
Scriptures to a truth that has been 
open from the beginning. 

It is this unity of mind and form 
which has been lost sight of in the 
whole treatment of its theme, and in 
its exposition of Bible witness by 
" Christian Science." 

This exposition is very brief in its 
own synopsis. It touches only at the 



[ 93 ] 

beginning and the end ; it explains 
only the Genesis and the Apocalypse. 
Strange that the very juxtaposing of 
these did not at once indicate to the 
writer the Alpha and Omega, the first 
and the last, the uncreate and the 
created, as mutually necessary and 
inevitable, eternal in their generation 
and reflex, the everlasting Father and 
Son, the Spirit and the Word that in- 
form and agree forever ! 

Compare — or rather read as one — 
the proem of the First Book of the 
Old Testimony with that of the Fourth 
Gospel of the New. 

" In the beginning God created the 
heaven and the earth." 

There is a meaning given in the 



[ 94 ] 

dictionary to the word " create " which 
is there illustrated by quotation of this 
very word of the " beginning." " To 
produce out of nothing." That is a 
definition which postulates too much. 
There is no " nothing." Or if there 
be a non-existence which we must so 
term, no thing was ever produced 
from it. There is another significance 
given farther on : " To beget, to bring 
forth." This is truer. 

Out of his own Being, God brought 
forth the worlds. That understanding 
redeems and illuminates the text. 

"In the beginning was the Word, 
and the Word was with God, and 
the Word was God." 



[ 95 ] 

That which God would set forth 
and declare by his creation was in his 
Thought from the beginning. It was 
already a reality in Him. 

"All things were made by him; 
and without him was not anything 
made that was made. In him was 
life; and the life was the light of 
men. And the light shineth in dark- 
ness ; and the darkness comprehended 
it not." 

The things made were not set off, 
separate ; God's Thought was not de- 
tached from them ; they were filled 
with Himself Without Himself 
there was not anything. His life was 
the light men should see by. Until 
they should recognize this life, they 



[ 96 ] 

would be in darkness; they would 
see only shadows. This is sense-ab- 
sorption. 

" The earth was without form, and 
void; darkness was upon the face of 
the deep." 

There was an earth in the mind of 
God; but it was not yet formed, or 
placed. Its beautiful verity, and all 
the wonder of its unfolding, were yet 
hidden in the Divine Thought. So 
far, we are permitted, doubtless under 
a type, to conceive of a remoteness of 
intent of which the first evolution was 
of a substance-potency out of which 
God would unfold all. We call it 
Chaos; matter not yet informed to 
specialty. Surely this does not con- 



[ 97 ] 

tradict the understanding of a reality 
which God ordained to work in. 

" The Spirit of God moved upon 
the face of the waters ; " over the flu- 
ent possibihty to be concreted in fact. 
" God said, Let there be Hght." 
We know now, in this later com- 
parison, what that light was. It was 
what should be the " life of men." 
It was the effluence of an Almighti- 
ness shaping toward its purpose. In 
suns and stars and moons ; in showers 
and dew and winds ; in fire and heat, 
in winter and summer, in frost and 
cold ; in lightnings and clouds ; in 
mountains and hills ; in green things 
upon the earth ; in seas and floods, 
in wells and springs ; in fowls of the 



[ 98 ] 

air and in beasts and cattle ; in chil- 
dren of men, in an Israel of believ- 
ers; in priests and servants of the 
Lord ; in spirits and souls of the right- 
eous, in holy and humble men of 
heart. In all these it was to be, and 
to outgive itself; the selfsame Light 
" that lighteth every man that cometh 
into the world." 

Mounting up, as the day mounts, 
from low horizon to the upper zenith ; 
from the power and showing in the 
first and natural to the power and 
showing in the last, the celestial; in 
lives and souls quickened of the liv- 
ing Spirit, that in lives and souls is 
named the Holy Ghost. 

Where, in this genesis, was the di- 



[ 99 ] 

viding line between the no thing and 
the all ? Where did the delusion 
gather itself up in actuality? And 
who was first deluded ? Man — and 
" mortal mind " — were not, when 
God, by and to Himself, declared 
that all was, and that all was good. 

" And the Word was made flesh, 
and dwelt among us, and we beheld 
his glory, the glory as of the only be- 
gotten of the Father," — the same ex- 
pression, note, for the bringing forth 
of the Divine in humanity as for that 
of the divine in things, — " full of 
grace and truth." 

Here is the culmination. "The 
fullness of the Godhead, bodily." The 



LofC. 



[ loo ] 

declaring of the unseen God by the 
" only begotten Son, which is in the 
bosom of the Father." The Word, 
begun in letter and syllable of sim- 
plest initial sign, spelled out to perfect 
utterance. 

And yet, letter and syllable remain. 
If anything is true, all is true. There 
is a ladder from earth to heaven; it 
stands firm on the reality of things 
already made and shown, and it holds 
fast at the supreme height by the 
Throne of God, among the things 
that cannot be told or conceived as 
yet ; and the angels of the Lord go up 
and down upon it. 

" My word that goeth forth out of 
my mouth," saith Jehovah, " shall not 



[ loi ] 

return unto me void, but it shall ac- 
complish that which I please, and it 
shall prosper in the thing whereto I 
sent it. For ye shall go out with joy " 
(into this world that I have made 
and am yet making) " and be led forth 
with peace; the mountains and the 
hills shall break forth before you into 
singing, and all the trees of the field 
shall clap their hands. Instead of the 
thorn shall come up the fir tree, and 
instead of the brier shall come up the 
myrtle tree ; and it shall be to the 
Lord for a name^ for an everlasting sign 
that shall not be cut off'' 

Is this a repudiation of the work 
of his hands ? Is this any teaching 
that the things He has made visible 



[ 102 ] 

and tangible, real and present, to us, 
are mere figments, to be rejected and 
disowned, or even divested of their 
seeming as emblems, and returned 
into the unknowable depths of the 
uncreated ? That by which the Lord 
names Himself that we may conceive 
of Him, shall remain for us to call 
Him by. His own sign is everlasting ; 
it shall not be cut off. It will be 
made greater, more glorious, to us, as 
we can apprehend it ; it shall be our 
eternal life to spell it out, to learn to 
pronounce it ; but it shall not be lost, 
nor perish. We may well believe 
that in the most transcendent mani- 
festation that shall ever be, we shall 
recognize tlie old, dear, simple begin- 



[ 103 ] 

ning still, as in all of evolution that 
science has traced is found the repeti- 
tion of every step and phase of all the 
grand, sure leading up. The same 
"goodness and mercy," in amplified 
lines of the same essential gift and 
grace, " shall follow us all the days of 
our life, and we shall dwell in the 
house of the Lord forever." 

The Hebrew Psalms are the voice 
of a people imbued through and 
through with this sense of a divinity 
in things ; with the truth that God is 
not separable from his creation ; that 
He is to be learned by his works; 
that He is " clothed with majesty and 
with strength " in the world that He 



[ 104 ] 

has " stablished that it cannot be 
moved." That his " throne is of old, 
and from everlasting." "Thy testi- 
monies," saith the chant sublime, " are 
very sure : holiness becometh thine 
house, O Lord, for ever." 

Trace that word " house " and its 
synonyms, — "tabernacle," "habita- 
tion," " dwelling - place," " church," 
"city," "heavenly Jerusalem," the 
" many mansions," — all through 
psalm and prophecy, gospel, and 
apostolic message and revelation, and 
see how they all mean something 
" builded " for an " abiding ; " some 
form and body of life through which 
the Spirit appears, and works, and 
puts itself in touch with spirit. Never 



[ 105] 

without insistence that there is more 
behind, to be yet revealed; that "the 
life is more than meat, and the body 
than raiment; " never without the re- 
minder that the kingdom, the throne 
of life and its ruling, are within ; but 
never loosing away from the evidence 
that which is to be made evident. 

" Seek first the kingdom, and the 
Tightness, of God ; and all these things 
shall be added unto you. For your 
Father knoweth that ye have need of 
all these things T And the need is not 
a mere mortal need. It is the need 
of the spirit itself, that must take form 
and find use in form, and that shall 
never be " disembodied " or denied. 
"We know," says Saint Paul, "that 



[ io6] 

if our earthly house of this tabernacle 
were dissolved, we have a building of 
God, an house not made with hands, 
eternal in the heavens." " God giv- 
eth a body as it hath pleased him, and 
to every seed his own body." " And 
as we have borne the image of the 
earthly, we shall also bear the image 
of the heavenly." 

It cannot but be an image, a reflec- 
tion, always : we ourselves are the body 
of God's showing; we are, in our 
highest, " one body in Christ Jesus, " 
— in the Divine Humanity. 

Image and Demonstration of the 
Divine, Christ declared himself and is 
declared. He sanctified forever all 
epiphanies in his own Epiphany. He 



[ 107 ] 

did not disdain the embodiment which 
made the Father manifest; he was 
raised up in it to a glory visible and 
embodied still. He is Emmanuel for- 
ever. The Supernal Glory we may 
never see : " we have the light of the 
knowledge of the glory of God in the 
face of Jesus Christ." 

He who was and is the Truth and 
the Life, was and is the Eternal Way. 
After Him shall we follow, in like 
manner, to a new appearing and a 
place prepared. " If the Spirit of 
Him that raised up Jesus from the 
dead be in you, He that raised up 
Christ from the dead shall also quicken 
your mortal bodies by his Spirit that 
dwelleth in you." 



[ io8] 

Our resurrection shall be like his. 
A quickening of the mortal into im- 
mortality ; a replacing of the corrupt- 
ible with incorruption. A passing 
over in power of the selfsame person- 
ality to a fuller, finer declaration ; no- 
thing obliterated, cast off as a lie; 
begun in such reality as expressed and 
served the being here, it shall be 
lifted up to the larger reality that is 
to find itself in relation with all larger 
being there. For he "shall change 
the body of our humiliation, that it 
may be fashioned like unto his glori- 
ous body, according to the working 
whereby he is able to subdue all 
things unto himself " 

One speech answers to another; 



[ 109 ] 

one Scripture carries us on to the 
utterance of another, yet always the 
same. Always God : and always 
the Divine made manifest. To put 
the manifestation aside is to deny 
that the Word has been made flesh : 
it is to deny the very Christ. 

" The earth is the Lord's, and the 
fulness thereof" God created the 
world that He might fill it full, and 
keep it alive, with Himself It is the 
everlasting co-venant ; the coming-to- 
gether ; the sign of the bow in the 
cloud, the Eternal Light in the earth- 
mist; softened, repeated, measured, 
for our receiving and bearing. " It is 
between me and you, and every living 



[no] 

creature of all flesh/' said the Lord, 
when He promised that all flesh should 
never more be destroyed by any flood. 
" O Lord, how excellent is thy 
Name in all the earth ! " The psalms 
of praise ring with the refrain. The 
glory of light, the majesty of storm, 
the might of the great deep, held and 
controlled within the " bound that it 
may not pass over ; " the sweetness 
of the little springs and water-brooks 
that " run among the hills ; " the 
" trees of the Lord," " where the birds 
make their nests ; " the " refuge of 
the high hills for the wild goats, and 
of the rocks for the conies ; " the day 
and the darkness, for labor and for 
rest ; " these," the verse recites, " all 



[ 111 ] 

wait upon thee. Thou sendest forth 
thy spirit, they are created ; Thou re- 
newest the face of the earth. The 
glory of the Lord shall endure for- 
ever: the Lord shall rejoice in his 
works. I will be glad in the Lord." 
" Glory ye in his holy Name." 

" Because the Lord is at my right 
hand, I shall not be moved. There- 
fore my heart is glad, and my glory 
rejoiceth : my flesh also shall rest in 
hope." Does this deny the sensible, 
or make of the sensible a shadowy 
thing of which we have no possible 
clear, positive ^' concept " ? Does it 
not exalt the things of earth, declar- 
ing that the common things of every 
day are of and by the very things of 



[112] 

heaven, and the will of Him to whom 
our souls respond in joyful under- 
standing, feeling through the made to 
the Maker, who "hath prepared his 
throne in the heavens," — whose 
" kingdom ruleth over all " ? 

" Bless the Lord, ye his angels ! 

" Bless the Lord, all ye his hosts ! 

" Bless the Lord, all his works, in all 
places of his dominion: 

" Bless the Lord, O my soul ! " 

" The Lord is my Rock." " The 
Lord is my Shepherd." Defense and 
comfort, — stronghold, and green pas- 
ture, and still water, — safety and 
peace in the very valley of the shadow, 
— under the very rod of an appointed 



[113] 

discipline and endurance, because the 
very rod is a staff also, — these are 
what He is to us, in joy or need, in 
pleasure or pain ; we demand nothing, 
we deny nothing; in all He is our 
sure well being, our sustaining, our 
restoring. And as He is real, the 
experiences of our life are real also. 
He does not deal with us in chi- 
meras; pain and loss are, in their limit, 
as actual as their beautiful and un- 
measured compensations; the differ- 
ence, the absolute and utter difference, 
is in the limit and the fullness. There 
is no separation, no enmity, for all is 
good, and of good purpose. " In the 
presence" of what seem like enmi- 
ties, our " table is spread ; " we " sup 



[114] 

with Him, and He with us ; " He 
blesses our bread, and our " cup runs 
over." 

^'AU the paths of the Lord are 
mercy and truth unto such as keep 
his covenant and his testimonies." 

" One thing have I desired of the 
Lord; that will I seek after: that I 
may dwell in the house of the Lord 
all the days of my life, to behold the 
beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in 
his temple." 

" The spirit of the living creature 
was in the wheels." This was the 
burden of the wonderful song of the 
vision of Ezekiel. It is the one out- 
shining of a certain meaning in it to 



[ 115] 

US who can understand so little of the 
strange, vast parable. 

There is one law, one necessity : 
the living spirit is in all the form and 
working. The life and the life mani- 
fest are one. There are no feeble, 
halfway signs. 

We and our wheels are one. We 
cannot detach ourselves, nor renounce 
the wholeness of our being and ac- 
countability. 

" Their rings " — the high, dread- 
ful rings of the great wheels that rolled 
between earth and heaven — " were 
full of eyes." They saw all their way, 
as they traveled, and all that their way 
revealed. Life is an open secret. 
*' When the living creatures went, the 



[116] 

wheels went by them ; and when the 
living creatures were lifted up, the 
wheels were lifted up." Are these not 
the wheels of circumstance and action, 
under great conditions and meanings 
of human history? Are they not the 
stories in the earthly, of souls, and of 
nations ? The bearing forward, in 
power and form, of our tremendous 
positive existence, moving by and 
beside, in inexorable energy, and in- 
evitable consequence, the choices and 
impulses of our living spirits ? 

" Where those went, these went : " 
there was no disjunction, no apartness. 
" When those stood, these stood ; and 
when those were lifted up from the 
earth, the wheels were lifted up over 



[ 117] 

against them : for the spirit of the liv- 
ing creature was in the wheels." 

Material life, and the living spirit ; 
they have been so surely as one upon 
the earth, that just so surely are they 
to be judged as one at the supreme 
last. 

"Their works do follow them." 
Nothing is left behind. Evil or good, 
that which has been, is. It is as use- 
less to say of sin, as of matter, that it 
is nothing, — that it does not exist. 
It lives forever in its results. Those 
results may still be sin, and more sin; 
or they may be " repentance unto sal- 
vation, not to be repented of," which 
has " wrought carefulness " and " clear- 
ing ; " " indignation " — standing on 



[ ii8] 

God's side against the past self, — 
" fear," " desire/' " zeal," " revenge " — 
holy vengeance upon the wrong, and 
grand vindication of the good : they 
may be these, so that even the "joy 
of the angels of heaven over one sin- 
ner that repenteth, more than over the 
ninety and nine that need no repent- 
ance," and the " everlasting joy upon 
their heads" with which "the re- 
deemed of the Lord shall return unto 
Zion," their high spiritual inheritance, 
— yes, the ^' rejoicing over " them of 
the Lord Himself, who shall " undo 
all that afflict " them, and " gather " 
them that were "driven out," and 
"rest in his love" with them, shall 
come to be understood beyond all 



[119] 

Other understanding. But for the 
very sake that this may be, the works 
must follow. 

" And the likeness of the firmament 
upon the heads of the living creatures 
was as the color of the terrible crystal," 
— the searching of holy, absolute 
truth, — "stretched forth over their 
heads from above." 

"And above the firmament that 
was over their heads was the likeness 
of a throne, as the appearance of a 
sapphire stone. ... As the appear- 
ance of the bow that is in the cloud 
in the day of rain, so was the appear- 
ance of the brightness round about. 
This was the appearance of the like- 
ness of the glory of the Lord." 



[ 120 ] 

" Appearance," — " likeness ; " " ap- 
pearance," even, " ^ a likeness ; " hea- 
ven itself is full of great appearances. 
Within, and yet within, they reach, 
and infold. There is no reality that 
has not its appearance ; there is no 
appearance, in all God's own order, 
that has not his own Reality — truth 
beyond truth — behind it. 

And before the Appearance of this 
ultimate Glory — before this Supreme 
Presence — we shall carry all our own 
mortal showings, to be judged in its 
tremendous light. 

Inextricably joined, and interde- 
pendent, as are the living creatures 
and the wheels, how can we say that 
soul has nothing to do with body, that 



[ 121 ] 

"soul cannot sin," that sin, as well as 
disease, is an unreality and illusion, a 
" belief of mortal mind," coming from 
the "false persuasion that matter is 
real"? 

Above all, in the face of this high, 
awful symbolism of appearance, what- 
ever we may choose to call it, reach- 
ing through earth and into heaven, in 
which we live and move, and in which 
God comes to us, how shall we dare 
to distinguish any sign or act of his 
from Him ? How shall we dare to 
think we can get behind, above, that 
firmament which is between us and 
the Throne, and measure God in his 
works by God in his Infinite Essence ? 
Yet this is what " Christian Science " 



[ 122 ] 

bids us do. This confronting and in- 
vestigating of God Himself^ in his 
Supreme and Inmost Nature, is pre- 
scribed to us as necessarily preceding 
our rightful understanding and ap- 
praisal of the semblances of things. 
Truly this is a reversal of life-order ; a 
leaping to the ladder top among the 
stars, that climbing downward we may 
master and prove the steps. It is a 
spurning of God's footstool, that we 
may invade his throne. 

" The New Testament of our Lord 
and Saviour Jesus Christ" begins, 
goes on and finishes with event and 
act, teaching and illustration, ministry 
and example, in the natural. But the 



[ 123 ] 

natural is never presented without the 
spiritual. The " reconciliation " is 
complete. It is a restoring. It is the 
bringing of the world and God to- 
gether again. The apostolic declara- 
tion of this is prefaced by the distinct 
insistence that " all things are of God," 
although the " old things " — things 
according to the old knowledge — 
" have passed away," and " all things " 
— in the new understanding — have 
themselves " become new." This is 
the " ministry of reconciliation ; to 
wit, that God was in Christ, reconcil- 
ing the world unto himself, not im- 
puting to them their trespasses," in 
the old ignorance and misuse of mere 
sense-life; not denouncing the sense- 



[ 124 ] 

life either, or declaring it unreal, but 
lifting it up to its absolute original 
reality in vital conjunction with the 
spirit. It is the perfect amnesty ; the 
new beginning, all errors condoned; 
the wakening of the Word in the 
souls of men, making all things, as of 
the same Word also, clean and holy. 

Jesus was baptized with water. He 
consecrated that sign of spiritual 
cleansing and renewal forevermore. 

He confronted the temptations of 
sense. He did not deny sense. He 
admitted sense-condition, and that 
there was possibility of turning it to 
evil. He acknowledged pain of hun- 
ger. He did not conquer by assump- 
tion that the pain of hunger could 



[ 125] 

not be. He bore it, in order to de- 
clare that bread, in its satisfying, is 
truly the gift of God, and that God 
Himself satisfies the hungry with a 
real thing, and that only the thing by 
which He chooses so to communicate 
the nourishing of his life to ours is so 
made real to its end. That we are to 
trust Him for it, and in it; that our 
eating is a communion; he never 
taught that we are to despise or reject 
it, or even to separate arbitrarily in 
our thought the life from its convey- 
ance. " The Son of Man came eating 
and drinking." We are to take food 
and drink, and the life that is in and 
by them, together ; as God's one word 
in answer to our need and asking. It 



[ 126] 

is nothing that we can do, or com- 
mand, or subordinate to ourselves, that 
will make or keep us bodily alive ; it 
is the continual down-giving and in- 
giving — through the visibly ap- 
pointed means — of the creative and 
sustaining energy. To our spirits 
He gives Himself, through spiritual 
media; our human thoughts, affec- 
tions, intelligence of and joy in the 
truth. That is his feeding of our hun- 
ger, and satisfying of our thirst, for 
righteousness. "Therefore, let us 
glorify God, in our bodies and our 
spirits which are his." 

For danger or hurt, Jesus met the 
trial of faith, and the temptation to 
unwarranted assumption, with demon- 



[ 1^7] 

stration in like manner. Could he not 
be hurt? Might he cast himself 
down from the topmost pinnacle of 
the temple, and not even dash his foot 
against a stone? He was conscious 
in himself of the power of what we 
call miracle. He knew that he was 
plenipotentiary of the Father, and that 
by such an act he might so accredit 
himself in men's eyes. But was his 
errand to teach and lead men in the 
practising of deeds like that ? Was 
it to do or say anything which men 
might understand to mean that as 
God's children they were so secure 
against material harm as to recklessly 
or carelessly defy material danger? 
He knew too interiorly that which 



[128] 

the Father doeth, to mistake or misap- 
propriate ; he was too truly the Way, 
to violate God's order of outer cause 
and consequence. If he had a know- 
ledge of divine order within and 
above what men have ever learned in 
this wise, it was of something within 
and above the common cause ; some- 
thing that controls and moves the 
common cause, but never revokes it. 
" Thou shall not tempt," he says, " the 
Lord thy God." Thou shalt not chal- 
lenge his Almightiness. 

The first miracle was a miracle in 
things. A using of the power that is 
resultant in things, from a point far- 
ther back than the obvious natural 
cause and process. We may as well 



[ 129 ] 

take this definition of miracle at the 
start, instead of any discussion about 
possibiHty or evidence, which is end- 
less; because we know but a very 
little way among the possibilities, and 
evidence is precisely the conveyance, 
through some sign or event, of a truth 
into the human understanding. What 
the men who afterward became apos- 
tles of the highest revelation ever 
given into the world understood by 
the signs which were given them, is 
the only evidence we can reach, and 
it is all we want. And right here, 
also, comes in the very distinction we 
need to miake in examining " Christian 
Science," between the notion of mat- 
ter as utterly non-existent, and the 



[ 130 ] 

perception of it as non-existent in it- 
self^ but as never, by any possibility, 
apparent only by itself; never with- 
out the life and word of spirit in it; 
appealing to sense, and sure to the 
senses made for recognizing it, but 
only so for the sake of spiritual mani- 
festation and interpretation to a sense 
behind the senses. Divine word in 
divine work ; human apprehension 
through human cognitive faculty in 
the external. It is idle to argue that 
when we see a blade of grass, we see 
only our human " concept " of a blade 
of grass, and that that is nothing. It 
is all we have by which to reach to 
the "thought of God" which He is 
showing us in the blade of grass. The 



[ 131 ] 

reality of matter is God's reality of 
self-expression; and our sense-power 
of seeing it is his correlative reality in 
our natural organization. Not all see 
or understand precisely alike, it is 
true ; each gets only what he can re- 
ceive; but the thing is there, brimful 
of gift and meaning for those who can 
and will receive ; and it enlarges con- 
tinually to the enlarging perception. 
Indeed, if we could understand a blade 
of grass to the last law and reason of 
its being, we could understand the 
worlds. No two persons see a flower 
or a star, a tree or a mountain, identi- 
cally. Color is far from being the 
same to everybody. Some people 
are color-blind. Some are music-deaf 



[ 13^ ] 

Some are senseless to fragrances. " To 
him that hath shall be given." " He 
that hath ears to hear, let him hear." 
But let no one deny. 

Jesus Christ began, and went on, 
through his ministry, by declaring in 
separate parables, of act or word, the 
One Great Parable of Creation. He 
began with most elementary teaching ; 
he showed by experiment how God 
gives, as it pleases Him, through the 
material. When he came to preach, 
he did not preach in the abstract. He 
brought life down to its smallest ex- 
periences. He admitted man's need 
in things ; his inseparable relation to 
them. He said, " I am not come to 
destroy, but to fulfil." He told men 



[ 133 ] 

that God's act and law in everything 
was true ; that act and law are one 
righteousness ; and he commanded 
them that their own deeds be true, in 
the same single righteousness in which 
God's are true. " If thine eye be 
single, thy whole body shall be full 
of light." 

" Consider the lilies," and believe 
that your Father will clothe your life 
with all perfect and beautiful mani- 
festation, as He clothes theirs. De- 
spise nothing. Reject nothing. Strug- 
gle not with, nor for, nor against things 
as if they were not all of one sure 
order and intent. Reach forth your 
hands and receive ; and in all receive 
Him. This is the life of the kingdom. 



[ 134 ] 

The kingdom is not far off and sepa- 
rate. It is at hand. It is in all you 
have, because it is first within you. 

When they did not comprehend 
his sayings, he asked them, " Know 
ye not this parable ? How then shall 
ye know all parables ? If I have told 
you earthly things and ye believe not, 
how shall ye believe if I tell you 
of heavenly things ? " 

He healed by a touch ; even by a 
word. Truly there was no need of 
intervention when the Divine was im- 
mediately present. But it is to be 
noted that the occasions were very 
few when he healed without the bod- 
ily touch, and never without the open 
outward assurance and communication 



[ 135] 

of sensible speech. He seemed care- 
ful to maintain the personal relation, 
and the double sign of flesh and spirit. 
He put himself in living contact both 
bodily and spiritually with those whom 
he would help. And we know how 
true it is that personal touch does 
help. " Take me in your lap," the 
child says to his mother when he has 
a pain to bear ; and he lays his head 
upon her shoulder, and is comforted. 
'' Hold my hand," says the sufferer to 
the loved one nearest. There is a 
sharing of endurance, a conveyance 
of the strength to endure. It goes so 
far, we seek not to deny, as to neu- 
tralize and cast out many a trouble or 
disorder in the flesh or spirit. Indeed, 



[ 136] 

it not only explains, but puts on high 
and everlasting ground, the human 
instinct toward human help which is 
the secret of Christian Science heal- 
ing. It is the sympathy, — the tak- 
ing on and bearing with each other of 
trouble and pain, — which is divine, 
and which the divine permits and 
makes instrument of in the human, 
imparting life-power and restoring by 
contact of a ministering love with a 
receiving faith. It is the inmost truth 
of the Christ-healing and salvation. 
Jesus, the Christ, put himself in man's 
place ; in each and every man's place. 
" Himself took our sicknesses, and 
bare our infirmities." He gave him- 
self into an absolute fellowship with 



[ 137 ] 

our suffering; he put all his love 
and might into conjunction with our 
struggle and desire ; he set his whole 
certainty and promise alongside our 
hope and prayer. And so far as we 
can do this for and with each other, 
identifying need with need, effort with 
effort, faith with faith, so far we have 
true share in the Divine Healing. 
" If two of you shall agree on earth 
as touching any thing that they shall 
ask, it shall be done for them of my 
Father which is in heaven." But it 
must be this integral agreement, this 
self-sameness of realization, which only 
comes from a perfect Christliness of 
self-giving. No mere external consent 
will do. 



[ 138] 

The world, in its anguish, is hold- 
ing the hand of Christ, expecting his 
redemption. Believing in Him, we 
hold each other's hands. Yet the 
power of help in this does not coun- 
termand, and never can conflict with, 
acceptance of the ordered physical aid 
supplied and plainly adapted to phy- 
sical condition. As soul and sign, 
they work together. 

Jesus used the direct power, and in 
divine measure ; but he never forbade 
what we call natural healing, through 
use and study of natural means. Even 
in commissioning those whom he sent 
forth in his own authority to do like 
work with his own, he did not tell 
them to instruct the people to give 



[ 139 ] 

over instrumentalities and remedies at 
once and for all the future, and to ex- 
pect continual miracle. Wonderful 
works were done, in what seemed to 
them wonderful ways, chiefly to as- 
sure them that all ways were wonder- 
ful ; that God's help is in all heaven 
and earth; that they are to be trustful 
of it everywhere, however it may be 
given. It is in that faith we should 
use wise care, and seek wise remedies. 
" Luke, the beloved physician," did 
not cease his ministry in his calling 
because he became a proclaimer of the 
gospel of the new ministration. Paul's 
mention of him shows that he was 
still at work in it. 

Christ fed the hungry in the wilder- 



[ 140 ] 

ness with real bread and meat. He 
did not tell them that they were not 
hungry nor faint; neither did he turn 
stones into bread for their amazement. 
He made the common food at hand 
sufScient for them. He reinforced it 
by the same power that puts vital nu- 
trition into the grain of wheat, and 
into the single grain the possibility of 
a multiplied harvest. He sent them 
away filled not only with bodily re- 
freshment, but with some sense of 
how all refreshment comes, and how 
it shall never altogether fail. He gave 
them the beginning of a faith that 
should be able to say, " Although the 
fig tree shall not blossom, neither 
shall fruit be in the vines ; the labor 



[ 14' ] 

of the olive shall fail, and the fields 
shall yield no meat; the flock shall 
be cut off from the fold, and there 
shall be no herd in the stalls ; yet will 
I rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the 
God of my salvation." Beyond even 
that, to answer the last doubt and 
dread with the triumphant assurance, 
" Though he slay me, yet will I trust 
in him." " For unto God the Lord 
belong the issues from death." 

Jesus Christ, the Lord of Life, sub- 
mitted himself to bodily death. He 
bore cruelty and pain; the very ut- 
most in the human ; to teach us how 
to die, and that to die is to live again. 

He came back to his disciples in 
the body that they knew. He walked, 



[ 142 ] 

and talked, and ate with them. He 
showed them his hands and his side ; 
he said to them, when they "were 
terrified and affrighted, and supposed 
that they had seen an apparition," 
" Why do such thoughts arise in your 
hearts ? Behold my hands and my 
feet, that it is I, myself: handle me, and 
see; for a spirit hath not flesh and 
bones, as ye see me have." " And 
while they yet believed not for joy, 
and wondered, he said unto them, 
Have ye any meat ? " 

Could he have more effectually 
declared that the evidence of sense 
is evidence? Could he have more 
clearly demonstrated the unity of ex- 
ternal fact with inmost reality ? We 



[ 143 ] 

cannot know, however we may en- 
deavor to conceive, exactly the na- 
ture of the risen body, or how it 
maintained relation and identity with 
the earthly individuality that had 
been ; how it could manifest itself to 
the sense that was still in the flesh, or 
whether it summoned to recognition 
of spiritual individuality the spiritual 
sense ; but we do see that the identity 
was announced and proven ; that even 
after his resurrection the Lord did 
not repudiate his own earthly sign of 
himself, his own conjunction with 
the material, his own sharing, then 
and always, with the nature and ex- 
perience of men in the conditions 
and manifestations of the outward. 



[ 144 ] 

The first chapter of St. Paul's 
Letter to the Church at Colosse is a 
setting forth of this revelation of the 
unity, and the glory of the inheritance 
in the ^'wisdom and spiritual under- 
standing" that translate all life into 
the life of the kingdom; unveiling 
the great secret that all life is "the 
kingdom of his " — God's — "dear 
Son, who is the image of the invisible 
God, the first-born of every creature." 
Is not this to say, the first in whom 
the created and the Creator are re- 
vealed together in the one Life ? 

" For by him " — by this very union 
of the Divine and the so-called nat- 
ural — " were all things created, that 
are in heaven, and that are in earth, 



[ 145] 

visible and invisible, . . . and he is 
before all things, and by him all 
things consist. . . . For it pleased the 
Father that in him should all fulness 
dwell; and having made peace 
through the blood of the cross," — 
the suffering of the human, — " to re- 
concile all things unto himself; whe- 
ther they be things in earth, or things 
in heaven." 

Every single understanding of the 
truth is a key that opens toward all 
understanding. We may go through 
the Bible again and again, each time 
with some one especial spiritual per- 
ception, and each time find its pages 
full of light and confirmation upon 



[ 146] 

that one point. Truth is many-fa- 
ceted ; each plane or face of it gives 
us its own color ; but the divided ra- 
diances never oppose ; they all pour 
forth from, and meet again in, the 
same clear, vast Unity. 

The recognition of this Unity of 
Truth — revealed in all the unities 
of spirit and form, the inner and the 
outer of God's Life and ours from 
Him — is the Master-key to Scripture 
and to all from which the Scripture 
is translated. 

There is no separate abstract, no 
separate concrete. The seen and the 
unseen are an indivisible completeness. 

The written Scripture is a book of 
type and image ; a revelation of all 



[ 147 ] 

parable in things and history. There 
is no parable without essential iden- 
tity of showing and shown. In the 
Bible truth takes on its wholeness. 
From the Co-venant with Abraham to 
the At-one-ment in Jesus Christ, — 
from the buming bush to the Great 
White Throne, — the primeval sim- 
plicity of faith is presented and re- 
stored. Spiritual and natural, God 
and humanity, are brought together, 
in the glory that "was in the begin- 
ning, is now, and ever shall be, world 
without end." 

Faith in ritual — soul in history — 
inspiration through the grand and 
wonderful and sweet in natural phe- 
nomena, — these are the elements of 



[ 148] 

the first and older Testimony : then 
comes the New, and tells us how the 
very purpose and accomplishment of 
it all have been that what " may be 
known of God " may be and is 
" made manifest." " For the invisible 
things of him from the creation of the 
world are clearly seen, being under- 
stood by the things that are made, 
even his eternal power and Godhead." 
It is simple, and lovely; it is un- 
speakably great and glad. God leads 
us by the outer sense in his world 
and in his Word, until our spiritual 
eyes are opened, and we can discern 
the inner. Then we are indeed in 
light. Then we have entered into 
life. We do not any longer stop in 



[ 149 ] 

mere manifestation, but the manifes- 
tation itself becomes to us an ever- 
lasting verity. The crowning word 
is fulfilled to us : — 

" The sun shall be no more thy 
light by day: neither for brightness 
shall the moon give light unto thee : 
but the Lord shall be unto thee an 
everlasting light, and thy God thy 
glory. Thy sun shall no more go 
down ; neither shall thy moon with- 
draw itself: for the Lord shall be 
thine everlasting light, and the days 
of thy mourning shall be ended." 

Christian Science, in full scope and 
right, is the unfolding of this gracious, 
transcendent knowledge. We are to 



[ 150] 

come to it by a living from the high- 
est; and to live from the highest is to 
make our common life a perpetual 
sacrament. It is to eat and drink, and 
to take remedy, to rest and sleep, to 
work and to clothe ourselves, in the 
presence and by the gift and leading 
of God ; to " do all things in the name 
of the Lord." It is to lie down and 
die, when that call comes, in perfect 
assurance that in death He is with us 
also, as He was at Calvary and in the 
tomb where Jesus lay, and that with 
him He will surely raise up us also 
by his Spirit that dwelleth in us. 

This quickening and uplifting life 
is the baptism of the Holy Ghost, 
which the first disciples were to carry 



[ 151 ] 

forth and make sign of to all the 
nations, in the threefold Name which 
holds all the mystery of Fatherhood, 
Sonhood, and Eternal Spiritual Pro- 
ceeding. And with the last spoken 
command stands the full declarative 
Promise, — the very Gospel of the 
Divine in and beside all the human, 
— ' " Lo, I am with you always : even 
unto the end of the world." 



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, 1 ,' 



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